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The Atlantic And Its Enemies: A History Of The Cold War (2010)

by Norman Stone(Favorite Author)

3.14 of 5 Votes: 3

ISBN

0465020437 (ISBN13: 9780465020430)

languge

English

genre

History & Biography

publisher

Basic Books

review 1: While it purports to be a history of the Cold War, this overlong volume by a distinguished WWI historian is actually a a grab bag of topical essays, some pertinent to the volume's subject and some not. Stone begins with an able account of the Soviet takeover of eastern Europe and a detailed, if sardonic, narrative of the Communist revolution in China, to which he adds an intelligent chapter or three on the rise of the European Community. His narrative threads unravel in the second half of the book, however, in which Stone chooses to grind axes (get it?) rather than properly finish his story. Thus, he tells the reader rather more than he/she would like to know about the stagnation of '70s England, British educational policy in the 1980s, the excellence of General Pinoche... moret's economic shock therapy in Chile (detention camps and torture chambers mentioned but dismissed as a liberal hallucination), the political history of Turkey in the 1980s, the nabbiness of the Kurds, and the awesomeness of Maggie Thatcher, for whom Stone worked as a speechwriter. He throws in a gratuitous 10-page biographical note on his incarceration in Bratislava for good measure. Stone's clipped prose style and amusing anecdotes keep the narrative moving along during the first half of this book, but the second half, thanks to its narrative disunity and focus on obscure subjects, is a real drag.
review 2: An outrageous, opinionated romp through the Cold War, "proving" that the Thatcher/Regan decade of the 1980's was the brilliant climax of world history and a missed opportunity because we lost the faith... So ideologically as suspect as a snake-oil seller. But also hilarious: the pen-assassination of Jimmy Carter's alleged cissiness and Edward Heath's face (like 'an angry baby') are scurrilous high- (I mean low-)lights. If you like serious, objective, balanced, academically respectable history, avoid this like the plague. For everyone else a dodgy must-read. less

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